Thursday, January 24, 2013

Blogger's Block

I think I am suffering from Blogger’s Block and I don’t know
why. I thought I might attribute it to “stress,” stress being a convenient
explanation these days for not being able to do things, think things, perform
things, manage your affairs, and even sometimes pay your bills and stuff. But
then I started thinking about the concept of stress. First, stress is not a
very precisely defined term, second, I think it is often merely used as an
excuse, third, it is widely overused, and fourth, I find it difficult to
separate stress from the natural course of events accompanying someone’s “Journey
to the West “ Let me explain.

When I worked in a large Department of Psychiatry (my first
academic position) there was a Psychiatrist (who will remain unnamed) who was
doing (what I thought was somewhat questionable) research on stress. He and his assistant had developed a scale of
stress they believed would allow them to predict who might be the most prone to
illness, accidents, or even death. Their scale dealt with assigning (arbitrary)
scores to different events people might or might not experience. Things like
being ill, getting married or divorced, having a child, losing a loved one like
a spouse or a parent, financial
troubles, accidents, and I don’t remember
what all. What I do remember is that in 1965 I calculated that if I took
seriously this scale I would have by then have probably died at least twice.
You can only imagine where I ought to be by now, almost fifty years later.

Certainly there has been almost unending stress in my life
in the past few months. My wife of thirty years died a completely unexpected
death from a stroke four months ago, also I became a grandfather for the first
time about four months ago, I inherited bills I didn’t know I had (plus bills I
already knew I had), I now live alone in a large home stuffed with things I am
having trouble coping with, and so on. On top of that, today I had to have my
oldest (wife’s) cat euthanized. Besides, it snowed last night making my
driveway difficult to maneuver. Thus, I should be suffering from plenty of
stress that is keeping me from wanting to write this blog.

But in spite of my situation I somehow do not feel terribly
stressed out. I do not really understand this but I doubt it is the reason I am
finding it difficult to blog. Personally, I think American politics and
government have become so idiotic I just
can’t be bothered to concern myself any longer. When one of the most important
matters that concerns us is whether or not Beyonce lip-synched the national anthem
during the inauguration I confess to losing interest in the matter. More
importantly, when Republican Senators, supposedly grilling our Secretary of
State on important matters, ask stupid questions and try to score cheap political
points and bask in the spotlight rather than being serious about an issue
already settled, I also lose interest. These Senators, among the most powerful
leaders we have, merely exposed themselves as the basic partisan hacks they
really are, making themselves look even more foolish than they already are.

And so, thinking back on my life, the deaths of my parents, the
divorces, the children, my adventures in New Guinea and elsewhere, being in
college and in the army, having surgeries, cancer, heart attacks losing most of
my classmates and friends, I do not understand why I should still be here trying
to write this blog. I have concluded that stress is perhaps merely a euphemism
for “life” itself. That is, living is in most respects being constantly
stressed by events and experiences beyond our control. Life is by nature
stressful. Once you grasp this basic fact of existence it is not easy to claim
stress as something so unusual as to cause your inadequacies or incapacitate
you. Life merely goes on from one stress to another until your own personal
Journey to the West comes to a merciful end. Concepts like “eternal peace,” “eternal rest” and “eternal bliss” take on much more salience than “passed
away,” “meeting your maker,” “entering
heaven,” reincarnation, or any notions of an afterlife. I am pretty much
convinced the purpose of death is to allow one to escape any such further
stress. I can think of virtually no fate worse than having to do it all over
again in a different life or context. The thought of having to deal with forty
virgins I find singularly horrifying. I like to believe that when you are dead,
you are dead and thus not plagued by any further stresses.